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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

New Thunderwolves and Tyranid Kits from GW - My Views

So there's a lot of buzz about the new kits that Games Workshop will be releasing in March. I have to say that I'm not as excited as everyone else. Before reading on, have a look here and see for yourselves................... Back? Good.

Right so why aren't I excited? Well I've commented on that post briefly but I thought I'd explain in a bit more depth on here. The new kits have been a very long time coming with both codexes having been around for several years now. From general internet rumour it seems that GW had the models ready for a while but thanks to the whole Chapterhouse saga they had to delay releasing them. Now that the whole legal debacle has apparently subsided they're free to release them. Obviously from their perspective they had already spent the money in designing them and might have even made the moulds so wanted some return from their investment. However, a lot of time has passed now and those of us who wanted to use these units have sought alternatives.

Take a look at my third party thunderwolves and see what you think but personally I prefer them to the GW models. I can't put my finger on it but I'm just not blown away by them. I'm certainly not going to go out and buy a set as I've already got some. I'm not a fan of the roundy shields and the ostentatiously big axes. My mythicast ones look more powerful in my opinion too. I think the other problem GW has is that those of us who like the unit will have bought them and those that weren't going to use them in a battle won't suddenly want to. The unit has debatable effectiveness in a competitive setting but I can see them being popular with hobby-orientated gamers.

With regard to the Tyranid models I think that most people have already made their conversions. For example the winner of the BW2 painting competition. The main problem people had was the lack of left handed boneswords (or was it right handed?) so at least that will be solved with this kit. It's always nice to see something go into plastic and retain it's detail too. I'm sure most Tyranid players will be happy.

Overall my reaction is that they're pretty much a "meh" release. I'm disappointed that yet another month will be going by without a new codex release. Tau, Eldar, CSM, etc all need some love!

7 comments:

i think you are dead wrong. not about whether you think they are good models, that is entirely personal taste, but about whether they will sell well. the vast, vast majority of GW buyers are casual gamers or simply modellers. they are not even aware that third party models exist, and in many cases they have no idea that other companies even exist! these people will all buy these models.

then you assume that only existing players of these armies will buy these models. i expect that there will actually be a lot of people who start new armies based on these kits. personally, i think they are that fantastic. i have never had any interest in nids and still don't, but those wolves are stunning in my opinion.

i am afraid that despite what the internet community thinks, it is, as ever, largely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. these models will get people excited, and they will sell, and i think that is great. should they have been released sooner? certainly. is it good that they finally get a release now? even more certainly.

I bought the mythicast ones and to be honest, I am going to be buying these ones as well and using these ones because the one thing I haven't seen mentioned is the tournament play... You HAVE to use models from GW now that the models are there. They're not going to tell you when they don't have a model you can't use them... but now that the models are out, guess what, the GW rule applies that the model has to be x amount of GW and an entire mythicast wolf doesn't cut it.

Well I've never played in-store but at Warhammer World there's never been any issues. There was a guy I played at Jolly Toys who was using a Terminator Salvation model for a Stormraven and nothing was said.